


Force of Gravity

by seimaisin



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-06-21
Updated: 2004-06-21
Packaged: 2017-10-14 22:21:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/154101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seimaisin/pseuds/seimaisin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in the same universe as "Who Can Turn The World On With Her Smile?" Sam and Cassie deal with Janet's death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Force of Gravity

“Sam? Do we have any dinner?”

Sam, seated out on the back lawn, turned around and looked at her screen door in surprise. Those were the first words Cassie had spoken to her all day. “Sorry, sweetheart, I already ate, but I think there’s some leftover pasta in the fridge.”

Banging sounds drifted outside from the direction of the kitchen, and Sam turned back away from the house, sighing. Now, likely, Cassie would take some sort of food – something with a distinctive odor, judging by past experience – up to the bedroom and shut herself in. When Sam went back inside to try to use the phone, she’d find the teenager embroiled in a five hour-long conversation with the same person she talked to for seven hours the day before. Sam would not, however, see Cassie in the flesh until hunger took back over the next day.

Cassie ate. Cassie slept. Cassie occasionally attended school. Cassie talked to her friends. Cassie did not talk to Sam, or to anyone else of an adult nature, not voluntarily. She’d been this way since … Sam drew her knees up to her chin and forced herself to at least think the words, if she couldn’t yet say them aloud.

Since Janet died.

Under a twilight sky, with the first evening stars beginning to pop into view, the concept still seemed absurd. If she turned around, walked into the house, and picked up the phone that was currently ringing insistently, Janet would be on the other end, dishing dirt on some fellow officer, or telling her to turn on the television to laugh at some stupid reality television show. Cassie would be home, where she belonged, with a real mother, instead of a temporary one who couldn’t figure out how to help a teenager mourn, not when Sam couldn’t figure out exactly how to mourn herself.

Sam lay back on the grass – it was a cool night, but on the warm side of the time of year, and so she only shivered a moment when her jacket made contact with the ground. She breathed deeply, and watched the transparent fog rise from her mouth and seemingly dissipate around the hazy stars above. If she thought about it, she could name every star in sight, and, in fact, list most of the stars that should be visible at this time of year. She could tell you how far away from Earth they were, whether they had any planets, and sometimes, whether those planets were controlled by Goa’uld or not. At that moment, however, she decided she couldn’t possibly care less.

When she was younger, Sam held a private conceit close to her heart – each night she possibly could, she watched the sky at dusk. She waited for the first star to become visible, and whenever it appeared, she blew it a kiss. In her imagination, that star was her mother, signaling her good night. It was a game she played for years, even up through college and the beginning of her Air Force career. Somehow, just naming that tiny point of light gave it – or her – energy, power. It was a tiny speck, but it was visible, and it made believing in an afterlife that much easier.

Tonight, though, she found no solace in the nighttime sky. Maybe her whimsical side was gone – beaten into a bloody pulp, left for dead on some random planet she’d visited. Maybe she was just angry at the stars, for all the people she’d lost to them. Her father was gone, for god knows how long; selfishly, she thought that the Tok’ra fight with the gods of the stars had proven more important than her. Now, Janet, her best friend, was gone, her life drained away on the dirt of a planet that meant absolutely nothing to Sam, not in the long run. The stars, those glowing spheres of energy that had so captivated a small Samantha, had proven sinister.

She heard more doors slamming in the house, and for a moment, felt guilty for remaining on her back in the yard. If she were half the mother Janet was, she’d go back inside, make another effort to get Cassie to talk to her. At the very least, she’d march into the bedroom and make the girl go to bed at a reasonable hour.

She continued to lie in the grass. Fuck it, she thought. She hadn’t stopped moving since the memorial service. There was work to be done at the base, pseudo-mothering to do for Cassie. No rest for good old reliable Sam. The Colonel got to fall apart. He got to escape to Minnesota and remove himself from the places that would remind him of the woman he’d fallen in love with. Sam felt bad for thinking ill of him, but dammit … it wasn’t fair.

“I don’t want to see him any more,” Cassie had muttered, the day Jack came to visit.

“Why not?” Sam asked, surprised.

“Because … they didn’t tell me. Not right away. It was like a secret, and they didn’t trust me with it.” Cassie drew her knees up to her chest. This was one of the few times she’d voluntarily spoken to Sam since she’d told the girl she’d missed Janet’s memorial at Cheyenne Mountain. “He got a part of her that I didn’t, and I hate him for it.”

Sam should have argued with her, she knew. If she was a better parental figure … but, deep inside her heart, she agreed with the teenager. Jack O’Neill had been sleeping with Janet for just over a year. She’d been Janet’s best friend for nearly seven years. Why did he get to run away, while she was stuck cleaning up the aftermath, coming face to face with Janet’s ghost every time she looked into her daughter’s eyes? Where was the justice in that?

More than anything, she wanted the ability to make an impulsive, dramatic gesture. Maybe, she thought, she’d quit the Stargate program to become Cassie’s mother. The thought was barely through her head when she started to laugh. Aside from the fact that Cassie was nearly an adult, the normal world now held no appeal for her. She couldn’t think of any challenges in earth-bound science that could hold her interest. Maybe, then, she’d find some far-off planet to live on, dedicate her life to helping an innocent population fend off the Goa’uld. Maybe she’d go find the Tok’ra and volunteer to become a host again. Even that seemed somehow preferable to continuing this painful existence. She didn’t want to face Cassie any more. She didn’t want to go to work, only to be reminded of her lost friend in shadows, around every corner. In the end, though, she would. She’d always go back, to do what everyone expected of her. Reliable Sam, always there when someone was in need, even if it meant sublimating the screams of rage that bubbled up every time she thought about all the people the Stargate had taken away from her.

The night turned colder, and Sam started to shiver, but yet she remained lying in the grass. Above, the stars mocked her with every wink. They told her what a fraud she was – for someone who spent so much of her life dreaming of their far-off wonders, in the end, she became the most earth-bound of all.


End file.
